[Exhibition Opening] Tapestry of Encounters: Contemporary Indonesian Art

The Institute for Australian and Asian Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University proudly presents the first contemporary Indonesian art exhibition on our campus—an exhibition that is distinctive, provocative, and visually and intellectually stimulating.

The title Tapestry of Encounters evokes both diversity and connection. Bringing together ten contemporary artists, the exhibition offers a glimpse into the richness, complexity and dynamism of contemporary Indonesian art. Spanning painting, sculpture, installation, textiles and mixed media, the works reflect diverse regions, cultural traditions and heritages, personal histories and experiences, global influences, and social and political interrogations.

The exhibiting artists—Agus Wijaya, Citra Sasmita, Ari Bayuaji, Faelerie, Made Wiguna Valasara, Lutfi Yanuar, Anagard, I Made Widya Diputra, Antonio S. Sinaga and Desrat Fianda—represent different backgrounds and artistic trajectories, including artists working in Indonesia and Indonesian artists based in Australia. Collectively, they demonstrate that contemporary Indonesian art is not defined by a single narrative or identity, but is shaped by a vibrant diversity of traditions, forms, materials and practices, and by ongoing creative transformation.

The exhibition reveals multiple encounters: between tradition and experimentation, memory and imagination, individual experience and collective histories, materials and meaning, identity and social realities, and between Indonesia and the wider world. The artists explore themes ranging from mythology, ritual and cultural memory to environmental issues, migration, urban life and the changing nature of identity. Across their works, inherited forms are reimagined, materials transformed, social realities questioned, and new ways of seeing and belonging take shape.

Presented at Western Sydney University, in one of Australia’s most culturally diverse regions, the exhibition also reflects the many histories, communities and cultures that intersect here. It highlights the University’s education connection with Indonesia through our Surabaya campus, creating an important bridge between our home campus in Western Sydney and our offshore campus in Surabaya, and strengthening connections between Australia and Indonesia through art, culture and knowledge.

A further encounter takes place between the artworks and their audiences. For many visitors, this may be their first encounter with contemporary Indonesian art. Tapestry of Encounters offers an opportunity to encounter Indonesia through the diverse perspectives of artists responding to their histories, environments, materials and contemporary lives. In this meeting between artworks and viewers, new connections and understandings may emerge.

The exhibition is presented in partnership with Redbase Gallery, Sydney and Kabo Art Collector, Melbourne.

About Artists

Agus Wijaya

Born in Cianjur, West Java, Agus Wijaya is an Indonesian-Australian artist of Chinese heritage living and working in Sydney. He transforms fragments of cultural memory into works that explore belonging, displacement, and identity. Working across digital abstraction, experimental sculpture, and installation, he employs subtle irreverence to test strategies of identification and dis-identification. His work attends to moments when familiar frameworks begin to strain, registering glitches between different ways of knowing and seeing.

Salikur

Sculpture

41 x 21 x 6.6cm

Citra Sasmita

Citra Sasmita is a contemporary artist from Bali whose work focuses on unravelling myths and misconceptions surrounding Balinese art and culture. She has developed the Kamasan Balinese painterly language in her practice, creating a geography of female figures, fire, and natural elements, composed whimsically in an unfolding of pansexual energy. Her powerful female figures challenge patriarchal narratives and reclaim traditional forms as spaces for questioning gender, history, and cultural identity.

The Embrace of My Motherland

2019

Synthetic polymer paint on traditional Kamasan canvas

400 x 90cm each (3)

Photo: Art Gallery of Ballarat

Ari Bayuaji

Born in Indonesia, Ari Bayuaji moved permanently to Canada in 2005. His practice transforms found, discarded, and everyday materials into poetic installations that reveal the hidden histories of objects and places. He collects used materials from around the world, exposing himself to the different mechanisms and cultural contexts in which they are found. His art explores cultural exchange, migration, and environmental change, turning what has been overlooked or discarded into something newly meaningful.

September Light

2022

Woven plastic and cotton threads

103 x 187cm

Faelerie

Faelerie, born in Wonosobo, Central Java, is best known for transforming traditional crochet and embroidery into emotionally powerful mixed-media artworks that take on a sculptural quality. Her works centres on memory, the body, trauma, healing, and femininity. The repetitive act of crocheting and weaving is itself an important part of her artistic process, inviting viewers to reflect on labour, time, and the relationship between craft and fine art.

Bloody Rhythm

2024

Hand crochet with cotton yarn

250 x 204cm

Made Wiguna Valasara

Made Wiguna Valasara, from Bali, is celebrated for his innovative approach to Balinese painting through experimentation with canvas, texture, colour, and three-dimensional form. His layered and sculptural surfaces, known as the stuffed canvas technique, bring traditional visual references into dialogue with abstraction, offering new ways of imagining Balinese identity and imagery in contemporary art. His works have raised a range of social and cultural issues in Bali.

Collective Fragment #3

2021

Handstitched, stuffed canvas

130 x 135cm

I Made Widya Diputra

I Made “Lampung” Widya Diputra is a well-established Indonesian contemporary sculptor recognised for his technically sophisticated sculptures and installations. He creates distinctive sculptural works through inventive combinations of materials, forms, and techniques. Drawing on Balinese cultural references while engaging with contemporary social realities, his works move between the familiar and the uncanny, tradition and transformation, reflecting the dynamic nature of contemporary life.

No One Escapes The Death I Ride

2013

Resin, Silicone, Brass, Leather, and Leather Paint

145 x 170 x 90cm

Lutfi Yanuar

Lutfi Yanuar is a Bandung-based artist whose work brings together tradition, nature, and contemporary life, reflecting on human survival, memory, and relationality through material, gesture, and instinct. Marble dust, sand, ink, embroidery, and ecological motifs evoke corporeal topographies, while narrative metaphors consider separation, reconnection, and the interplay between individual and collective experience. His work also addresses plural cultural identities and human existence within natural and social environments.

The Ground of Fire #13

Sterilized Volcanic Ash from the 2019 eruption of Mount Tangkuban Perahu, Marker, and Cyanotype on Hahnemuhle Paper

30 x 40cm

Anagard

Anagard is a stencil street artist based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, whose work blends traditional Southeast Asian motifs with contemporary urban visual language. He uses intricate, multi-layered stencil techniques to address cultural identity, resilience, and post-colonial dialogue. His compositions draw on Javanese batik, mythological symbols, and street culture, creating a dynamic fusion of past and present. His practice questions social conditions, power structures, and the contradictions of contemporary life.

Serving Humanity

2025

Stencil spray paint on Sarong

130 x 105cm

Antonio S. Sinaga

Antonio S. Sinaga, born in Surabaya, is a recognised contemporary conceptual artist. Through his multidisciplinary practice, he examines religion, belief, identity, social values, and the complexity of human experience. He constructs ambiguous and psychologically charged situations in which personal histories and social relationships become subjects of investigation. His works are known for their provocative nature and often incorporate humour.

Good Lord

2023

Hand tufted rug with wool & acrylic on cotton canvas

240 x 200 cm

Desrat Fianda

Desrat Fianda was born in Padang. His art practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, video, and mixed media, and engages with the tensions and contradictions of contemporary Indonesian society. He is particularly recognised for his sculptural works that transform stone and fossilised wood into the form of books, reflecting on how history, memory, and cultural identity are preserved and interpreted. 

Indonesian Sites

2013

Wood Fossil

4 pieces of viable dimensions